This is a suggestion for the long-term, I'm not even sure whether it is possible to implement in FOnline.
Anyway, the suggestion is rather simple in concept: you should be able to put yourself available for hire as a merc. Of course, that is already possible in theory, but in practice there's no way to actually enforce this.
It should be possible to come up with a system like this:
- You can get a "merc card" for a nominal fee and with some skill requirements. For example, you get a "Level 1 Small Guns Merc card" for 1000 caps and 80% Small Guns skill, and a "Level 2 Energy Weapons Merc card" for 3000 caps and 130% Energy Weapons skill. These cards are items in your inventory that you keep when you respawn, except in some conditions (see below).
- You can trade these merc cards with other players. Those who want to hire you will make a money offer, which you can accept or not. If you accept it, the other player gets your card, and you get the money of course. That other player is now your "boss".
- You get the card back when your contract expires automatically. This prevents you from being hired by more than one "boss" at a time. If you die while someone else has your card, you only get the card back when your contract expires (but you still get it automatically).
- A new faction must be created in FOnline, called "Mercenary Guild" or something like that. No-one can join this faction. For every kill you nail while under a contract, your reputation with this faction increases slightly. For every time you die, leave your boss, or simply do not attack the enemy, you lose reputation with that faction.
- At the end of your contract, your boss can give you a boost to your reputation with this faction. It's left entirely up to him, but the bonus cannot be too big (say between +20 and -20).
The main problems I see in this approach:
- Enforcing the time before the contract expires. Perhaps one could hold several cards, like a 15-minute card, a 1-hour card, etc. When you trade one of these, all others are deleted from your inventory until you get it back. It would be nice if one could use a "Say" window within the barter screen to specify how long the contract lasts. Naturally, this value must be visible to the person hiring you.
- Enforcing that the person who gets hired fulfills his/her obligations. The reputation system probably accomplishes this rather well, and I think it would be great if this is the single thing that holds you to your contract. This means that you can actually just leave your boss for dead in the wastes, but your reputation will suffer. It might be hard to implement though. NPCs from the Mercenary Guild should be present in major locations (NCR, Hub, Vault City, etc) and anyone can ask them with the Say button what is the reputation of any given person. This will allow good mercs to demand higher wages.
- Adapting the reputation system to other types of mercenaries (medics, scouts, etc).
- Sharing the experience gained from kills. This is a more general problem in FOnline, so I won't discuss it here.
It seems to me that this is a reasonably hard-to-implement feature. On the other hand, being available for hire strikes me as one of the things that would really happen in a post-apocalyptic world. If you are a sniper, you can hire a melee-wielding tank to hold the enemy far while you blow their eyeballs out. If you are going to hunt deathclaws, you can hire three or four mercs to accompany you to make sure you survive.
So, what do you all think?
